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Wow, I can’t believe how long it’s been since my last blog post…yikes, time surely does fly.

It’s been a busy ol’ time, buying a house, selling our apartment, all that goes with that (paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork followed by appointments, cleaning, sorting, more paperwork, finding a new school…) and also (almost) completing my yoga teacher training course…and last week our lovely boy turned 7, I’ve posted a few pics of his birthday treats over on my Instagram account and been asked if I’d share the recipe so here we go…I tried a few different recipes and this one is really good, the cookies keep their shape, don’t spread in the oven and taste good too. *don’t even think about using a shortbread recipe…what a waste of time THAT was!

I used a Fox cookie cutter by Emporte-Piéces at MeriMeri and then I made a little cardboard stencil out of the packaging to use for dusting on the cacao powder.

Ingredients: (makes around 35 cookies when you keep rolling out the off cuts and cutting more)

1 cup (8 ounces) of unsalted butter, softened (room temp)

1 1/2 cups of castor sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp of Pure Vanilla Extract

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

4 cups (17 ounces) of All-Purpose Flour (use white flour to get the pale colour of the cookie)

Cacao powder for dusting (optional)

wooden cocktail stick to make the indents for the eyes.

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375f / 190c degrees.

Sift the flour into a bowl and set aside.

Place butter in a bowl and beat until smooth. I used my KitchenAid to do this but you can do it by hand.

Add the sugar and mix until combined.

Add eggs one at a time mixing well in between each addition.

Add the vanilla, salt and baking powder and mix well.

Mix in the flour one cup at a time and mix just until the ingredients are combined. Do not over mix.

Divide the dough into 3 balls and place in the fridge for about 10 mins, this helps the gluten to develop so you can roll it out without it breaking up.

Roll each one out on a mat (I rolled out onto baking paper then layered them up on to a baking tray), roll them out to about 3mm deep, any thinner and you risk the cookies breaking too easily. Then pop them into the freezer for 10-15 minutes and cut out your cookie shapes and bake 7-9 minutes. It is important to freeze them first as this really helps them keep their firm shape.

Once I had cut them out I placed them onto baking paper on an oven tray, then used the stencil I’d made and dusted them carefully with the cacao powder using a soft brush (I have a craft brush I keep for this job), made the little indents for the eyes with the cocktail stick and popped them in the oven, I did one tray at a time for around 8 mins each, place them on a wire rack too cool and then stop the kids from wanting to eat them all 🙂

The paper bags in the image above are simply stitched rectangles of baking paper filled with dried fruit (I used cranberries and raisins) and some chocolate covered pepernoten and raisins, I wanted a simple non-plastic treat for the kids to enjoy. #uselessplastic

Hello and thanks for stopping by. My boy turned 5 yesterday! Here in the Netherlands it is tradition for the children to take a treat into school to share with classmates, sugary food is of course not a good idea so fruit is a good alternative. We checked out Pinterest last week for ‘traktatie’ (treat) ideas and Dexie chose a Pirate Ship melon! I was kind of wishing I hadn’t shown him the internet but it’s good to challenge yourself (apparently) so we went shopping for a boat shaped melon at the weekend. Turns out October is not the best time to shop for watermelons in this neck of the world.

Sunday evening I set to (fortified with a glass of Sauvingon) with my carving knife whilst the other parent made the pirate flags (good job one of us is a professional). It takes patience but it’s not that difficult (working out the best way to cut the sails and get them to stay up is the hardest part). So I say, “give this one a go!”.

Thanks to the teacher for taking the class room photos! Better than my grainy efforts. *note to self – take the time to photograph these things better!